🚀 go-pugleaf

            |           +---------I      __L__  ___/       \ -------I
       +----+----+      | ___\_\_ |       \./   |         | -----+- |
       |    |    |      |  __ \/  |      --+--  |---      |  |---|  |
       I----+----I      | I__J/\  |      __|__  |  |      |  |---|  |
            |           | _____ \ |       /| \  |  |      |  L__-|  |
            I           I---------J      / J  \/   |      | V    |  J


             * C h i n a   N e w s   D i g e s t *


		    (ND Canada Service)

                       -- Dec. 26 (I), 1989


Table of Contents
                                                                  # of Lines
 Brief News  ..........................................................  17
 1. Large Crowds Flock to Church for Christmas Services  ..............  38
 2. Workers Told to Tighten Belts  ....................................  33
 3. Ceausescu Was Executed, And Army Looks in Control  ................  59
 4. Developments in EE and SU: Opposition Leader Behind Ovethrow  .....  42


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brief News
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: tang@ssurf.ucsd.edu
Source: San Diego Union, Chinese Daily News (World Journal), 12/23-24/89

    Nicolae Ceausescu had already fled  a  popular  uprising  at  home  when
thousands  of  miles away in China, television still carried his last speech
as if nothing happened. Ceausescu's sudden  fall  from  power  clearly  took
Chinese  officials by surprise. The Foreign Ministry took more than 24 hours
to issue a substansive comment, and then said simply that it was  fiollowing
developments  with  interest  and  hoped to continue friendly relations with
Romania.

    PRC will issue a 16-digit "social security number"  to  every  resident.
Meanwile, every unit will get a 7-digit code.  These numbers will be used in
registration, banking, tax, statistics and so on.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Large Crowds Flock to Church for Christmas Services
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: tang@ssurf.ucsd.edu
Source: Los Angeles Times, 12/25/89

United Press International

Beijing -- Thousands of Chinese packed churches Christmas Eve  to  pray  and
sing  joyfully  hymns once banned, and church officials said their congrega-
tions have grown since last June's crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

    Large crowds of worshipers and the merely curious jammed into  Beijing's
churches  for  evening  Protestant  services  and  midnight Mass at Catholic
churches.  Some services were so crowded that many worshipers were forced to
wait outside in frigid weather.

    Uniformed and plainclothes police were out in force at the churches  and
security  precautions  were  substantially  strengthened from last year, but
there were no reported incident.

    From stooped grannies with head scarfs  to  toddlers  in  bright  padded
jackets,  Chinese Christians joined singing renditions of "Silent Night" and
the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's "Messiah."

    Clergy at several churches said the number of worshipers  has  increased
since  the military crackdown on the pro-democracy demonstrations last June,
with many appearing to seek some form of spiritual comfort.

    A young railroad worker said he joined a Protestant church last fall be-
cause "I was looking for something to believe in."

    Beijing now has about 40,000 practicing Catholics and a  dozen  Catholic
churches, and more than 5,000 Protestants with 10 churches.

    Still, there are periodic crackdowns on  underground  "house  churches,"
often  run by Catholics who have refused to renounce links with the Vatican.
Several elderly priests remain in prison for refusing to renounce Rome.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Workers Told to Tighten Belts
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: kwchan@hkucs.UUCP (Chan Ki Wa)
Source: South China Morning Post, 12/23/89

    The Chinese leadership is raising  the  socio-political  status  of  the
working  class while asking labourers to tighten their belts in anticipation
of hard times.

    The leaders' message that workers must prepare themselves for  a  period
of  economic  hardship was sent to participants of the second meeting of the
Executive Committtee of the All China Federation of  Trade  Unions  (ACFTU),
which ends today.

    In a talk to the union leaders, the General-Secretary, Mr  Jiang  Zemin,
urged  trade  unions  to  tell  workers the difficulties and problems in the
economy had accumulated over the past few years and they  should  understand
the necessity of the current austerity drive.

    He emphasised that next year was a time of vital  importance.   "If  the
working  class  remains  steady and the country's economy develops in a con-
tinuous, stable and harmonious way, we will  fear  nothing  whatsoever."  he
said.

    Analysts say that given the bulging budget  deficits,  Beijing  will  be
hard put to raise the morale of workers, many of whom are forcesd to draw up
to a third of their salaries in government bonds.

    The ACFTU chairman, Mr Ni Zhifu, promised workers that the disparity  of
income between management and labourers would be curtailed.  He said that in
future, the earnings of factory directors should at most be three times that
of ordinary workers.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Ceausescu Was Executed, And Army Looks in Control
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: yawei@aqua.bacs.indiana.edu and tang@ssurf.ucsd.edu
Source: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, 12/24-25/89

Bucharest -- The Provisional Government announced  that  Ceausescu  and  his
wife were executed on Monday, after a secret trial.

    Buildings burned and bodies littered the capital Sunday as citizens  and
allied  soldiers  battled  secret  police  units  loyal to deposed President
Nicolae Ceausescu.

    The fighting has been some of Europe's most brutal since World  War  II.
Romanian  radio,  in  the hands of the revolutionaries, called a cease-fire,
but heavy fighting continued in the center of the city and at the airport.

    Romanian radio said Sunday soldiers had found a  vast  network  of  safe
houses  and  secret  tunnels  criss-crossing  the city that Ceausescu forces
stocked with arms, ammunition and monitoring equipment in recent years.

    The tunnels run for miles, linking Ceausescu's palace with  party  head-
quarters  and  extending  as far as a lake in the northern part of the city,
said the radio.

    The revolutionary coalition ordered a cease-fire and told  all  non-army
personnel  to  turn  in  their  weapons by Monday at 5 p.m. local time.  The
group is trying to halt the anarchy in the streets and disarm  civilians  as
well as Ceausescu loyalists.

    People violating the  cease-fire  "are  committing  crimes  against  the
Romanian  people  and  will receive the strictest punhishment," said the Na-
tional Salvation Committee decree.

    Ceausescu's security forces are elite,  heavily  armed  police  who  are
essentially fighting for their lives.

    The revolutionaries have vowed revenge for the massacres of unarmed  ci-
tizens during the massive pro-reform protests.

    The French offered to send a brigade of volunteers to fight on the  side
of the National Salvation Committee, if military help was asked.

    Meanwhile, the first convoy of outside medical aid began  to  reach  the
capital in the afternoon.  Crowds cheered as the first such parade of trucks
arrived.

    The convoy had started out from the Bulgaria border town of Ruse, carry-
ing  21  doctors  and  15 nurses from French civil defense forces as well as
others from the Paris-based humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.

    Arab citizens receiving guerrilla training in  Romanina  may  be  taking
part  in  the  fighting  for  Ceausescu.  Bucharest radio said the army took
prisoner several "Arabs," while killing others in recent fightings.  A Syri-
an  diplomat in Budapest said Sunday he didn't exclude that "Syrian citizens
(students) were involved in the fight."

    Romania has been home to 10,000 Arab students,  some  of  whom  attended
special courses in terrorist training in two traning camps near the capital.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Developments in EE and SU: Opposition Leader Behind Ovethrow
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: kwchan@hkucs.UUCP (Chan Ki Wa)
Source: South China Morning Post, 12/23/89

Agence France Presse

Paris -- Mr Corneliu Manescu, 73, the head of the National Salvation  Front,
which  seized power in Rumania yesterday, is one of the leaders of the oppo-
sition movement against Mr Nicolae Ceaucescu, according to Western diplomats
in  Bucharest.   A former foreign minister and the first communist president
of the United Nations General Assembly, he has been under house arrest since
April for criticising the regime.

    In March, he and five other  former  members  of  the  party  leadership
signed an open letter to Mr Ceaucescu, which was published in the West, giv-
ing a damning account of the situation in the country.

    They denounced the Government as incompetent and accused Mr Ceaucescu of
discrediting  socialism, isolating Rumania within Europe, violating the con-
stitution and the Helsinki Final Act on human rights.

    Mr Manescu was put under house arrest in an agro-industrial  complex  at
Chitila, near Bucharest, in primitive conditions -- without running water --
and was refused medical treatment despite poor health.

    A militant anti-fascist during World War II, he became chief of the pol-
itical  department in the armed forces in 1945.  He was named deputy defence
minister in 1948 and deputy chairman of  the  state  planning  committee  in
1955.  After  serving  as  ambassador to Budapest in 1960, he bacame foreign
minister in 1961, a post he held for the next 11  years.   In  1967  he  was
elected president of the 22nd session of the UN General Assembly.

NOTE OF EDITOR:

    An English translation of the open letter aforementioned  was  published
on The New York Review of Books, April 27, 1989, with an informative commen-
tary of Willian Pfaff.  In last August, Ceaucescu told Newsweek, in  an  in-
terview,  that  among the six signers, "one is an agent of the Soviet Union,
one of an agent of the United Stats,  one  of  the  Great  Britain,  one  of
France."


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   Executive Editor:  Sanyee Tang, tang@ssurf.ucsd.edu                    |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
News       Transmission    chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.ca   (or)
-----------------------    ---------------------
NDCadada Editor: Bo Chi    chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu    
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tue Dec 26 12:40:55 EST 1989